IMAX coming to the Rave theater

Friday

Oct 1, 2010 at 12:01 AMOct 1, 2010 at 12:22 AM

IMAX Corp. spokeswoman Sarah Gormley confirmed Friday that the Canadian-based company will open an IMAX digital theater at Rave Motion Pictures in Northwest Peoria, as part of a partnership the two companies officially announced last month.

Journal Star Staff

An IMAX-brand theater is coming to Peoria.

It just isn't at the location everyone might have thought.

IMAX Corp. spokeswoman Sarah Gormley confirmed Friday that the Canadian-based company will open an IMAX digital theater at Rave Motion Pictures in Northwest Peoria, as part of a partnership the two companies officially announced last month.

The Peoria IMAX is one of 13 new digital theaters the company will install at Rave locations around the country.

According to a news release, six of those theaters are scheduled to open in November, with the remaining seven opening in early 2011.

Jeremy Devine, vice president of marketing, with Dallas-based Rave Motion Pictures, said the Peoria IMAX will open "mid-first quarter" next year.

Negotiations, meanwhile, are ongoing about potentially landing a second IMAX-brand theater in Peoria at the Peoria Riverfront Museum.

The museum screen - which will be much larger than the Rave screen - is projected to feature educational films and digital productions that will give audience members an immersive 3D experience.

The museum's screen is projected to be 52 feet tall and 72 feet wide, bigger than the IMAX screen at the Rave, which one industry expert projects will be about 30 to 32 feet tall and 50 to 60 feet wide.

"It's nothing like what (the public) would see if they went to a true IMAX-film giant screen theater that most people believe they think of as an IMAX theater," said James Hyder, editor and publisher of LF Examiner Magazine, an independent journal for the large-format motion picture industry. "It will have sharp digital picture and good digital sound (but) it's not exactly that same experience."

Dave Ransburg, chairman of the Peoria Riverfront Museum board of directors, said a final decision on whether an IMAX-brand theater will be included in the Downtown riverfront project should be made at the board's Nov. 4 meeting.

Museum officials will meet with the county's two museum-related committees next week to provide an update on the negotiations.

A news release that PRM board members issued late Friday said a number of systems and systems integrators also are being considered besides IMAX, such as D3D (represents Dolby 3D), RealD, Global Immersion and Sky Skan.

That same release said that in the past few years, the PRM board has seen a shift in IMAX's strategy toward new releases - competing with traditional first-run cinemas - and away from its traditional focus on high-end educational films for museums.

"We may still have an IMAX," Ransburg said Friday. "It may be an unusual circumstance with two of them."

Ransburg said museum officials were aware of the negotiations between IMAX and the Rave.

"The Peoria region will have access to first-run IMAX films," Ransburg said, referring to the Rave's IMAX.

He then added, "that's not what we're planning to show (at the museum). All along, we've intended to show educational films and second-run films. The problem is that over the last few months, IMAX has moved from institutional to more commercial-driven and are opening in more theaters."

Including the Rave.

The Peoria IMAX is part of an expansion into multiplexes that has seen 198 new worldwide theater signings announced by the company this year, up from 35 signings in all of 2009. The company is publicly traded on the NASDAQ exchange.

If museum officials opt for a non-IMAX feature, they believe it could provide a "more cutting-edge" product with a wider variety of films, flexibility and control of programming, according to the PRM board's news release. Museum officials also "recognize that higher marketing expenses may be required to initially offset the high brand recognition of the IMAX name," the release states.

Ransburg; Ryan Beasley, vice chairman of the PRM board; and Lakeview Museum officials viewed multiple products and learned more about the industry during the Giant Screen Cinema Association's annual conference last weekend in Chattanooga, Tenn.

"Clearly, the industry is going digital," Ransburg said.

Peoria's relationship with IMAX generated some controversy in August when city officials questioned why the name "IMAX" - the largest and most recognizable brand in large digital screens and immersive theater technology in the world - was not included in redevelopment agreements before the county and city.

Museum advocates touted IMAX as part of the project leading up to an April 2009 referendum that would support the museum with $40 million in sales taxes. The referendum was narrowly approved by voters.